


Reverberations

by TerokNorTailor



Series: Old Habits [2]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: M/M, postcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-03
Updated: 2013-06-03
Packaged: 2017-12-13 21:02:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/828854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerokNorTailor/pseuds/TerokNorTailor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Garak sits down to lunch on his destroyed home planet, but the meal is missing something...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reverberations

The former tailor sat down for lunch under a flimsy tent in the meager market now beginning to bloom again in the Torr sector. Small hydroponic farms had been set up in favor of letting plants take root in the now radioactive Cardassian soil. A small serving of fried lennet sat before him next to an expired wrappage of Yamok sauce. It wasn’t really that dangerous to eat, for it was still riddled with preservatives as a result of its commercial distribution.

Garak sliced into the foil wrapping with a slim dagger he had taken to carrying lately. Streets were dangerous these days. The Capitol was full of opportunistic gangs targeting anyone they could – even the Detapa Council’s newest appointed official. The term ‘Federation Liaison’ was nothing more than a useless formality. Communications with the Federation were carried over decaying comm networks, and relations still didn’t allow for a magnanimous offering of assistance from the decided victors of the Dominion War.

For the moment, all Garak could do was offer help at every possible corner. Nowadays, he worked odd jobs fixing computer systems, the interface eyepiece seemingly having worn smooth spots into his left orbital ridge. Other times, one of the new orphanages would recruit him to sew their occupants much needed new clothes out of salvaged fabric.

On a delivery visit to one of these orphanages, he found something unexpected. Heartening, but still coming out of a place not even he could have seen. The children, upon asking their names, seemed to defer their surname to the name of the establishment. They had formed their own family.

Family was something Garak never truly had on Cardassia.

His blood was thick with lies.

Seeing the children proudly consider themselves to be of the ‘Tarlak’ family or the ‘Damar’ family had reminded Garak of the times he had been on Bamarren – forming greatly familial bonds without the aid of blood relation. Those were good memories, if not somewhat tainted.

The lennet stalks were limp, not crispy like the ones so often seen on an opposite plate in the Replimat, and the Yamok sauce was only a shadow of its’ former robust flavor. The meal in front of him seemed almost two dimensional. A distant bright light and loud rumble heralded something that was formerly rare on Cardassia.

Rain.

The final events of the Dominion War had saturated the atmosphere with clouds of ash and greenhouse gases. Endless monsoons now pelted city ruins with acid rain. Those caught for long periods of time in the storms were afflicted with burned skin and melted hair. People sometimes even took their own lives by unwittingly poisoning themselves with untreated rainwater they had collected. Nevertheless, Garak was sure that the majority of these deaths were not accidental.

The newest monsoon’s supercell cloud formation was still a ways off, but Garak knew he would feel better if he were underneath a solid roof instead of a flimsy market tent. He thanked the vendor for his lunch, which he had finished unfortunately in hasty silence, and ducked out of the tent. Briefly, he paused to don his raincoat, which had been previously draped on the chair underneath the tent. It wasn’t Garak’s proudest design by far, having been fashioned out of a castoff emergency tarp, but the slightly metallic fabric did wonders to prevent the acid rain from stinging his skin. However, the impermeability of the coat did the same for liquid as it did for air. Wearing the thing was suffocating – ultimately provoking small bouts of claustrophobia when he wore it.

Today wasn’t that bad for Garak wasn’t going far, but previous days of wearing the coat had resulted in vivid flashes of memory. He felt his nails scratching at the inside of a closet door, and then he found himself in a Tzenkethi prison. Walls were closing in around him. Other times, Garak was transported to the cramped interior of a Nor station conduit, or a crawlspace between the walls of a Jem’Hadar prison. A flickering light caught Garak’s attention as it winked out of existence, and for a moment he wasn’t sure if it was in his memories or the real world.

More lightning.

Real world.

These periods of real world or memory had haunted Garak since returning to his own planet. Sometimes, he could chalk it all up to his Cardassian memory going into overdrive at being in a familiar place, but he knew that wasn’t right.

Sometimes he woke up in his quarters – clearly seeing the oval window and glowing red heat units lining the walls and ceiling. Sewing work now transported him back to his tailor’s shop aboard the Station. Lunch, well…

Today’s lunch had been a rarity.

Too often, Garak had looked up from a plate of understandably disappointing zabu stew or a scrambled regova egg to see a familiar face staring at him.

This face was the source of the uselessness that came over Garak whenever he walked by the various clinics in and around Cardassia city. Seeing hundreds of dying victims when he knew there were millions more in need of help put cold lead in his heart. Cardassians were dying from the simplest of things since the Dominion War. Scratches and broken bones were getting infected without proper treatment, and old diseases had resurfaced. There was no shortage of new respiratory infections caused by detritus heaved into the air by the Founder-ordered bombings. Chemical burns were rampant thanks to burst conduits, and unwarranted electrocution was as common as its cause – unguarded exposed circuitry.

Death was a grim constant on Cardassia.

Garak continued to walk. He could have turned in the direction of his makeshift home, the utility shed beside the ruins of his childhood home that now served as his mother’s tomb. Instead, he headed in the direction of the coast. The raincloud drifted ever closer to the Capitol, threatening to drop its acidic payload on the city. Garak didn’t care. He wasn’t in Cardassia City at the moment. In fact, he wasn’t even on the planet.

He was on the Defiant, the bright lightning and concussive thunder serving as natural analogs for the combined firepower of Jem’Hadar, Breen, and Cardassian weaponry. Orders were being shouted around him, the air becoming thick with urgent voices. One particular voice stood out, now taking on an alarmingly stern and disillusioned timbre.  
Garak held on to this voice, letting it play in his head until his footsteps found hard rock.

An elevated stone outcropping hung over the water, a path having been worn by many pairs of feet before. In normal afternoon lighting, the rock would have taken on a yellow-orange tone in early sunset. Today’s overcast weather made it almost gray.

Garak climbed the outcropping, letting himself take the steps so many others had taken.

At the top, he looked out over the churning Okaba Sea, its water choked with acrid pollution and various unwelcome flora. Schools of small fish no longer played in the shallows. Garak felt sick.

One phrase echoed through his mind – his own words repeated through another’s mouth.

“There comes a point when the odds are against you and the only reasonable course of action… is to quit.”

A shot rang out, and a burning pain ripped through his left neck ridge.

Garak thought about ending it.

He could throw himself over the edge right now.

The rock supporting his feet seemed to shift and move as a tightness gripped Garak’s chest. He fell to his knees just as rain started to transform the ground below him into a spotted, slightly sizzling mass. He hoped it was just another claustrophobic attack.

The rain burned, but not as much as the tears that were now falling from Garak’s eyes. Smog-filled air raked his lungs as he tried to draw a full breath. Each time he turned his face toward the light, acid-laced water stung his face. 

“Why…” The envenomed word escaped his lips quietly, a whispered hiss. A fervent vibration began to take hold of his entire being. This wasn’t claustrophobia.

“Why?” He was asking the Dominion now. Asking them to answer for murdering his Cardassia. Garak was now buzzing with rage.

“WHY?” He implored the long dead reason for his exile, who had forced him onto Terok Nor. The very station that had become Deep Space Nine, his reluctant home for over a decade. The political no-man’s-land where he had met the doctor who ended up saving his life. His words echoed about the coast.

“Julian.” He said the name as if in mourning. No ‘dear doctor,’ no evasive tone, no attempting to hide any more. He would have told Julian Bashir everything at this moment, except he wasn’t there. As far as Garak knew, he was still on DS9, no doubt immersed in another one of his holosuite programs.

The rain came hard now, as did Garak’s tears. His body was wracked with violent sobs as he pounded the rock with tightly balled fists. Hard stone tore into his knuckles as the acid rain sent pain shooting deep into his nerves. To think this all started with an unsatisfactory lunch.

Garak picked up fragments of himself, pulling the hood of his raincoat as low as it would go and hiding his bloodied hands in the generous cuffs of the sleeves. He knew the worst of the rain was still to come, and that meant finding shelter.

As he retraced his steps back to Cardassia City, the absent skyline burned the truth into Garak’s eyes.

He had to stay on Cardassia, even if it meant never seeing Julian again.


End file.
